


Silver and Gold

by Shadow_Belle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Belle/pseuds/Shadow_Belle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rebels had made it to Falkirk.</p><p>This was where they were going to make their stand against the dark. Where the cresting waves of the sanguine tide were to be turned.</p><p>It was indeed a fitting place, a stained land that nurtured the fire of the righteous, the courageous. A hard land where the riverbeds had run dry and cracked; begging to be filled with the blood of martyrs once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver and Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sage](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sage).



A Christmas gift fic for Sage

 

Silver and Gold

 

The landscape had been so white. So pristine, but it was an ugly paint over the rotting bodies of the fallen.

Ice had crystallized; diamond tears hanging from the trees like tinsel. The soft, purpled light of dusk caused the snow to glitter like an albino blanket of stars.

And Hermione couldn’t help but wish for color. Reds and greens splashed across the alabaster. Silver and gold, bright and hard. Something but that endless, stark luminosity. That faux innocence that made her stomach churn, that softness of the white void.

It had been Christmas Eve when Draco Malfoy stained the ground crimson at Falkirk like so many others before him.

Red.

His cloak had been spread out behind his prone body in the snow, so verdant that it was like a canopy of some deep unknown forest. It sprawled; the mangled wings of a dark angel.

Green.

His eyes had been so vivid, so clear. Sharp. Galaxies lived and breathed in those depths, sparked to a brilliant life, but snuffed into a silent dark oblivion as those portals closed, ushering in the twilight of all things.

Silver.

Screaming, her hair flying, her heart breaking, Hermione on her knees in that cosmetic white powder. Cheeks rosy from the whipping wind, hoarse animal cries torn from her raw throat, numb fingers grasping at his wounds, warm and sticky…

 _“Would you die for him?”_ Disembodied words from a disinterested god.

Tears, like snowflakes.

 _Would you die for him?_

Hot, pulsing life soaking the ground the around her knees, spurting past her fingers… Shaky, gasping breath in irregular puffs.

Forgiveness on those Nordic chiseled features. “No,” a faded gasp from bloodstained lips.

But they weren’t her lips, no. Never her lips. Because she **would**.

 _Would you die for him?_

Yes.

And it was Hermione on her back in the snow, a dark veil of shadows setting like the sun over her vision.

His hands grasping futilely at torn flesh, her blood melting that veneer of innocence over the tainted ground.

His voice now, raised to the heavens, howling in fury, and broken desperation.

 

0ooo0ooo0

 

The rebels had made it to Falkirk.

This was where they were going to make their stand against the dark. Where the cresting waves of the sanguine tide were to be turned.

It was indeed a fitting place, a stained land that nurtured the fire of the righteous, the courageous. A hard land where the riverbeds had run dry and cracked; begging to be filled with the blood of martyrs once again.

And there were so many willing…

He’d come to her in the dark of one fated night, his shadow long and terrible over her sleeping form.

He pressed his fingers to her mouth softly, and Hermione had thought it was the chill of death on her lips. But it was only Malfoy.

Only Malfoy. Only the sun gone dark in the daytime sky, only a rip in the fabric of the real…

Only Malfoy.

Only a man.

A man with a death’s head tattoo on his forearm.

But his words had been whispered grace. “They’re coming,” he’d said.

0ooo0ooo0

She’d never know why he came to her, why he trusted that she would listen. And in those next days, weeks, months… Hermione had still wondered if it wasn’t all a grand design. Tiny victories granted to gain their trust…

Until that spring day in the lowland glade.

That day when he’d bled for her, fought for her, killed his own for her.

They’d attacked as a unit, a hunting party searching for human prey.

And he was every bit the avenging god come from Valhalla, his cloak behind him in the wind; the bolts of Odin himself shooting from his wand. Such a horrible beauty wrought on his patrician face. He hadn’t been able to deflect all of the hexes, he hadn’t tried.

Still, he’d come to her, blood seeping from his wounds. “Where do you hurt,” he’d asked her. “From where do you bleed?”

“My heart.” She’d managed a choked cry.

She gave herself to him in the newly budded grasses, confessed her love in harsh whispers as she spilled her blood, her maiden’s blood, as he was her first. Her only. Her always.

0ooo0ooo0

 

It was the lock of her hair he kept with him that was his undoing. Such a small thing of notice, the lock of a lady love, chestnut and wild, braided and kept next to a man’s heart.

Malfoy was named traitor and sentenced to death, for that lock could belong to no other than Hermione Granger.

They closed in on him like a pack of wild dogs, tearing with bare hands and teeth, slashing and cutting…

No magic for the blood traitor.

But he was strong, powerful enough to use his wand before they could take it from him. Strong enough to Apparate to that place where Hermione was, that place of silent peace where he could rest his head on her breast and watch the dusk of this world fade to the next. Where he could speak the words that would let him rest quietly beneath the endless waves of the ashen sky.

But still there was no time, with his cheek on an icy veil; his body would rest as it fell.

Though her screams pierced him, her sorrow…

 _Would you die for him?_ Ah, no my love. Don’t die for me. Live for me. Live, Hermione…

But she hadn’t. And though it was his body that now took breath that should have been hers, he was dead too.

0ooo0ooo0

Yule had come to Hogwarts. A festival of lights and candles, of feasts and gifts, of tinsel and holly. There was music and dancing, much revelry to be had before the students were sent home to their waiting families.

But a sixth year Draco Malfoy stood alone by the now frozen fountain. His green cloak was a stark revelation against the gentle, fat flakes of snow. His cheeks were red against the chill. And his eyes were quicksilver, piercing some unknown distance.

He couldn’t explain the ache in his chest, didn’t want to… He wanted to freeze into the landscape, his heart cold, his sorrow a marbled likeness with nothing beneath, nothing sharp, nothing that could hurt like this.

 _It can still be changed._

He unfurled his hand to look at the lock of hair braided with his own. The one that he’d found clutched tightly in his own fingers on waking from that same cursed dream.

Platinum and chestnut.

In the light, it was almost gold.


End file.
